A Sober Night in Massachusetts

 

Why not take your schizophrenic friend

to a haunted hospital?

 

It didn’t seem like such a bad idea

until you put it that way.

 

He said he saw translucent light.

He said he knew where our dead friend

had written his name in concrete.

 

“This better not be more

of your mental-illness bullshit,”

I said as we walked, eyes down,

around the gas station.

 

He laughed.

I laughed.

It was.

Villanelle for This Condition

 

What will I do with my silly soul?

Like a garbage man put in charge of an eclipse

Given full responsibility and limited control

 

Sunlight scrapes the bottom of my bowl

I say a prayer made of potato chips

What will I do with my silly soul?

 

There’s a new senior angel on patrol

But what can I trust from her lips?

Given full responsibility and limited control

 

What strange advertisements—the totem pole,

The baby’s face, the shadow-play of apocalypse

What will I do with my silly soul?

 

All I truly own is what I stole

But I return again, by way of an ellipse

Given full responsibility and limited control

 

You trade too much for this parole

From the question in your comic strips

What will I do with my silly soul,

Given full responsibility and limited control?